The dark, secret sister of bright, expansive day, night is at once feared and revered. Night explores the many faces of the night: its myths, its flora and fauna—and its human side, too. In this new book from the Literary Companion series:

• Galileo ruminates on the moon he observes over Florence, Italy, following its path through one of the world’s first telescopes
• Annie Dillard follows the trail of a total eclipse of the sun in the desert of New Mexico
• Gretel Ehrlich writes from Greenland, contemplating the months-long Arctic night
• Tim O’Brien makes his way through the deadly nightlife of Vietnam
• Christopher Dewdney theorizes about the very first night
• Wayne Grady explains the evolution of human night blindness, which makes us fearful after dark
• Timothy Ferris laments the artificial brightening of the night

Bats and fireflies, skunks and whip-poor-wills, a writhing confluence of alligators, the shape of a garden in the dark: this anthology is a veritable universe of both the terrors and the inimitable beauties of the night.